MODERN SUN BATHERS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIX, Issue 5340, 17 October 1928, Page 1

MODERN SUN BATHERS.

KNOWLEDGE AND IMMORALITY. COMMENTS ON QUEER CULT. Stead’s Review (Austra.Ua) contains some interesting comments upon a queer cult of super sun bathers o-n the Continent: — “In some European countries! the cult of the open air has reapjieid a stage which even surpasses that of the sunny beaches of 'Australia; It would certainly shock the .councilioirs of St.. Hilda <V. Bondi. In Germany one sees, as a, customary sight ithe banks of rivers and 1 lakes covered with thousands of pep-plel of ajl ages and both sexes lying or exercising in the sun, with but the. slenderest of loincloths to temper their nudity. It is the same in Switzerland!, Austria, and! Central Europe generally. “But the pure, merino cults, go much further. They practice sun bathing dancing, and exercising in,.the open air entirely nude ;ajid! without any segregation, of the sexes. They boldly, almost hotly, claim that, this is the true way.tcf break down false modesty and to create tfhe atmosphere of true morality. They have certainly succeeded in shocking the police, Mr and Mrs Grundy, the bishops, the nonconformist. conscience, and suburban villadmn. And yet, in spite! 'of these encouraging signs in their favour, I am profoundly convinced that these latter-day nudists are wrong—thoiugh n.ot so wrong as their European ‘wowser’ opponents. "After, all, we must separate- sun bathing for health —now a well-estab-lished practice, beyond controversy, and really as old as the hills— friepn mixed nudity for the inculcation of true morality. What particular ‘virtue’ is, there in the abandonment of the; loincloth ? I believe, from observation o-f many races, native and civilised, that final modestyds natural, elven though it may be inextricably mixed up with the concealment that ■allures, as in female adornment. T 9 me it is the very adage of love, ‘two’s company, threp’s none,’ that renders almost sacredly individual this last stronghold of personal intd-miagy. Seixual emotion is debased, not anoralis,ed, by public exhibitionism. “Far sounder than these somewhat exaggerated efforts to free the sexes from their ‘bad pasts’ is the h<XW triumphant movement — exceipt inEngland—fcjr teaching simple biology in schools, evening classes, and public lectures. Easily the worst offerice of the classical master, who ha® domin’ 1 ated English education until quite recent years, has been his openly-ex-pressed hostility and contempt for science. The blight he has imposed upo-n scientific education in this country is well shown by the enormously greater adyancesi made in America, Japan, and Western Europe. Biology, zoology, and physiology are t.a ; tnght pretty thorcjughly in thousands of their schools. The ultimate result must be the natural breaking, down of that disastrous ignorance of the working of their bodies which leads children to such shipwreck and misery in thejr formative years. Evolution, physiology, dietetics—these are the kind of subjects which destroy false modesty and substitute the healthy interest of satisfied cinriosity f°lF pruriency and furtiveness’.”